It’s overcast and the air is stagnant – as if holding back a breath. Shaun Davis’ pickup has arrived. Once the truck’s turned off, there’s the click of the driver-side door handle and a mashing of metal as the door lunges wide then is elbowed shut. Out steps a hulking mass of man whose biceps

Lynne Tillman has been homeless. She knows what it is to have nothing. At present, she’s living with a nephew in Independence. But she’s living for her son, Kwadjo Tillman, a precocious 14-year-old who is two certifications away from becoming a master diver. A few years from now, Kwadjo plans to attend college and double

She’s known as The Gourd Lady and, no, she doesn’t don a costume made of dried fruit — although she did wear a costume when she gave living history seminars at Missouri Town. “I’d tell you how to clean and preserve gourds — and be scratching myself in my antebellum wool dress the whole time,”

is neck is as thick as a tree trunk, his hands as course as sand paper. Today, Steve McBee is the owner of the Lan-Tel Communications Co. in Independence. Once upon a time, Steve McBee was the owner of a lot of black eyes and respect among his peers. “I admit, I used to know

is Independence barber shop walls are draped with faces familiar to any fan of the Western genre. John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood. They’re all here. So are the other parts that make up the American cowboy: the 10-gallon hat, bull horns, a rope looped into a lasso. For Ron Siemer, these vestiges of a

arbara Allen Gard was 5 or 6 years old when she met up with the gang. The gang, who all lived in homes near Maple Avenue and Delaware Street in Independence, was comprised of Gard and her three sisters, the two Ogden girls and, lastly, the leader of the bunch, a precocious, carefree teen named

t was in a wooded clearing near Cement City Road in Sugar Creek strewn with broken bottles and stripped of undergrowth – save a few weeds that sprouted after floodwaters receded this past spring – that a shallow grave containing the bones of two children was discovered Sunday morning. Independence Police spokeperson Tom Gentry confirmed